Highlighting how poverty and social injustice affect the health of poor people in the developing world and their inability to seek quality health care, civil society organizations and campaign groups unveiled at a recent World Health Organization-sponsored conference in Brazil an action plan targeting these two issues.
The link between health problems and issues of poverty and social injustice has been largely glossed over in discussions on how to improve the health situation in the developing world, the Guardian’s Sarah Boseley says in her blog.
The campaigners at the Rio conference are now raising the stakes publicly, she adds.
“We call upon the World Health Organization, both the Secretariat and Member States, to take decisive measures to address the deep and persistent inequities in power and opportunities which prevent a majority of the world’s population from enjoying their right to health,” the civil society organizations and interest groups say in their action plan, where they call for urgent action, including the following:
Implementation of equity-based social protection systems and of publicly provided and publicly financed health systems that address economic, social, behavioral determinants of health.
Use of progressive taxation and wealth taxes and the elimination of tax evasion to finance health programs for the poor.
Explicit recognition of the “clout of finance capital” and its dominance of the global economy as well as the consequences of its periodic collapses, such as in recent global economic and financial crises.
As Boseley explains, the campaigners also argue that people should be protected from marketing strategies of the tobacco and alcohol industries, among others. In addition, the action plan opposes the privatization of companies and calls on rich countries to compensate the poor countries they recruit nurses and doctors from.
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